Death toll rises to 27 as work resumes at collapsed Florida apartment

Crews in ‘full search and rescue mode,’ with 118 people still missing after 12-story Champlain Towers South crumbled over a week ago in Surfside

By AFP 5 July 2021, 8:58 pm

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Miami Beach resident Tracey Lynne visits a makeshift memorial near the site of the collapsed Champlain Towers South Condo in Surfside, Florida, on July 3, 2021. (Matias J. Ocner/ Miami Herald via AP)

SURFSIDE, Florida — The death toll climbed to 27 on Monday, in the collapse of a Florida condo tower, where search work resumed after the dangerously unstable remaining portion of the building was brought down with explosives ahead of a coming tropical storm, officials said.

Some 118 people remained missing after the 12-story Champlain Towers South crumbled over a week ago in Surfside, but an Israeli search official put the chances of finding survivors at “close to zero.”

Still, crews “were in full search and rescue mode” by early Monday, hours after the remaining section of building was toppled in a haze of smoke and dust, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a briefing.

She said the demolition had gone according to plan and that searchers had found three more victims in the rubble after work resumed.

Levine Cava added that authorities had raised “millions of dollars, thanks to the generosity of people in this country and all around the world,” with funds to be distributed to impacted families.

Authorities had halted work at the site because the unstable structure posed a threat to search-and-rescue teams, especially ahead of the expected arrival of Tropical Storm Elsa, probably Tuesday.

Rescue workers continue working on a pile of debris after the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo was taken down with a controlled demolition on July 5, 2021, in Surfside, Florida. (Saul MARTINEZ / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

But as workers climbed back onto the huge debris pile, the head of an elite Israeli search-and-rescue team helping with the effort, Colonel Golan Vach, said on CNN he had told family members that the chances of finding survivors at this point were “close to zero.”

The imminent arrival of Tropical Storm Elsa — it was expected to reach west-central Cuba by midday Monday before passing near the Florida Keys — forced authorities to accelerate the demolition schedule.

The collapse in the early hours of June 24 sparked a massive search-and-rescue effort, but no survivors have been found since that day.

Experts are looking at possible pre-existing critical flaws in the building’s structure, and are surveying other older high-rises in the area for potential problems.